Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but went on to graduate from Christ's College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir
The Boy With The Topknot and his novel
Marriage Material.
Empireland has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives in London.
Arjan Banga is forced to leave London to help his lonely mother run Bains Stores, their family‰۪s provincial corner shop. But, it‰۪s also a return to all that he tried to leave behind: narrow worldviews and post-industrial decline‰ÛÓand Singhfellows, a desi pub that defines itself by a religion that officially rejects drinking. But, his mother is adamant to keep the store open, forcing Arjan to work with her, reassess his relationship with his gori fianc̩ and discover his family‰۪s silent history: his aunt‰۪s elopement, his mother‰۪s marriage to a lower-caste man, and his family‰۪s strange relationship with their desi neighbours, the Dhandas, whose macho heir can‰۪t stop listening to Malkit Singh and declaring: ‰Û÷Am just gonna bun dis spliff.‰۪
The story of modern Britain as seen through the windows of an English shop with a big Punjabi heart, Marriage Material is the humorous chronicle of finding love as a desi in England‰ÛÓand of English desis forging and celebrating a betwixt identity that is neither here nor there.
